iOS 8: Using and Disabling QuickType

By Melissa Holt

Oct 7th, 2014 8:45 AM EDT

iOS 8’s so-called QuickType feature is a pretty big departure from how predictive typing worked previously. As you’re composing an email, text, or what have you, a bar will appear above the keyboard with suggestions that you can tap to fill in.

Touch one of the suggestions to accept it, or if you type a space or some punctuation instead, your device will automatically choose whatever word was highlighted at the time. To continue on with what you originally typed instead of replacing it with a suggestion, tap the option on the left (the one in quotations):

Yep, “Obser.” That’s totally what I meant.

If you don’t like this feature (or just want to temporarily disable it), there are a few ways to stop it from rearing its tiny little omnipresent head. First, you can pull down anywhere on the QuickType bar to collapse it. Once it’s hidden, swipe up on the thin grey bar shown below to bring it back.

You can also touch and hold on the “swap keyboards” icon (which looks like either a smiley face or a globe). That’ll bring up a switch to disable QuickType, which will remove the bar from your screen completely.

An important point here is that this option will be greyed out if you aren’t in a place where QuickType works (like, say, an email “To” field), so if you can’t change the setting, tap elsewhere on your screen to move your cursor.

Finally, another way to remove this feature is to visit Settings> General> Keyboards and toggle off the “Predictive” option.

This has the same effect as turning it off through the “swap keyboards” icon mentioned above.

Note, though, that these methods don’t get rid of auto-correction entirely; the QuickType bar will go away, but the behavior will just revert back to the way it was in iOS 7.

I’m actually pretty fond of QuickType so far! Apple even claims that this feature knows your particular style of writing in each app—for example, if you use more informal language in texts to your friends than you do in emails to your boss.